


linger in the doorway (of my field of paper flowers)

by bittersnake



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Disturbing Imagery including:, Eldritch Embodiment of Planet, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Mutilation of bodies (adults and children), Plants, Rebirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-07 16:16:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20820194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittersnake/pseuds/bittersnake
Summary: She can't tell if she got the better deal or not.Foolish. Did you truly want to waste away in this sand-ridden hell?a voice whispers, low and soft.No, she thinks,but it would be a familiar hell, at least.





	linger in the doorway (of my field of paper flowers)

**Author's Note:**

> Deepest thanks to [chrysogenum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysogenum/pseuds/chrysogenum), as well as mod sisters [politicalmamaduck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmamaduck/pseuds/politicalmamaduck) and [crossingwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter), for taking this piece from a bunch of stream of consciousness to something appropriate for the public.

There's an old woman at the outpost. 

She can't tell if she’s the same one as before or another woman whose life has been drained by the scavenger's life on Jakku. Another version of herself, a Rey who was a bit harder; her heart closed a bit more. She can't tell if she got the better deal or not._ Foolish. Did you truly want to waste away in this sand-ridden hell? _a voice whispers, low and soft. _No,_ she thinks, _but it would be a familiar hell, at least_. The voice is silent. Almost chastised.

Niima Outpost has changed greatly and yet not at all. There is the illusion of order in the marketplace. Not just the generic smuggler riff-raff that infests the planet, but Rey can hear some clipped accents ubiquitous among the Core Worlds: posh Coruscanti commenting on the perpetual sheets of sand that seem to cover everything; a Correllian drawl bartering for a (most likely) ill-gotten trinket, a smattering of Shyriiwook both from hired guards as well as travelers; a random collection of Outer Rim folks—she's not as familiar with their accents; and some blue-skinned humanoids speaking stilted Sy Bisti. 

There's just more _everything _at the Outpost. Far more than there was when she was young—or maybe it was always there, but she was blinded by hunger and thirst. That part of Niima's Outpost has not changed. The surface of the Outpost wishes to give the air of vibrancy and life and prosperity_, _but she can feel the underbelly of it. Niima’s heartbeat: Desperation. Fear. Hunger. Thirst_. There’s no wonder why this place held such interest to the Dark Side_, she reflects as she walks through the marketplace, not truly looking for anything so much as soaking in what has or has not changed over time. 

Time.

_It's been a year._

_I'm waiting._

"Looking for someone, my child?" a voice calls out. Rey stills, then continues on. She hasn't been young in so long.

_"_All are young to me, my child."

She keeps scanning until she comes across the old woman. Well, _an_ old woman. There were—_are_ many on Jakku. 

"Come, sit and stay a bit, my child," the old woman says from beneath a salvage tent. Her gnarled fingers gestures Rey inwards. 

"I can't stay for long," Rey begins, ducking her head into the shade, absentmindedly picking up a piece of salvage to scrub. She easily falls into the simpler rhythms of her past: _shake, tap, rub, shake, tap, rub_. Memories of hunger and exhaustion surround her, not just her own, but of every soul who entered this tent, desperately hoping what they had was enough. _Shake, tap, rub._ The life beat of a Jakku scavenger. "I promised I would meet someone."

"Ahhhh, the one who was defined by broken vows is committed to keeping one," the old woman mutters softly.

Rey stares at the crone. Her hands are still caught in the old rhythm but her mind is racing. _Who is she? Is she the same woman from before? Do I know her?_

"Worry not, child. You merely have the look of someone who wanted to lose faith in people a long long time ago and yet held onto hope. But, maybe this time faith pays off."

Rey’s hands finally still. "I need to get going." She stands and wipes the sandy residue off on her pants.That's another thing she doesn’t miss—the constant itch of sand in the creases of her palms. In her lungs. Some days, Rey swore she could feel it beneath her skin; the coarse grains of Jakku’s sand forever embedded into her very bones. "There's someone waiting for me," she says. 

She stumbles out of the stall onto the well worn path—hands twitching from the seductively familiar feel of sun-heated metal beneath her palms—to her speeder. Thankfully, intact. _Another change to Jakku_, she thinks as she climbs onto her speeder. _But on the other hand, who would try to steal from a woman carrying a lightsaber?_

"Miss! Miss!" A voice rings out.

She turns to the Twi'lek man with mottled green and blue skin swathed in standard scavenger wear: layers of sun-bleached coarseweave, worn leather boots and gloves, and goggles balanced upon his base of his partially wrapped lekku. 

"Yes?"

"The Teedo are saying a storm is coming soon," the man says, gesturing to the endless expanse of sand in the distance. She can see a few graying clouds, if she squints off into the distance. She shrugs off his concerns, placing her own goggles on her face. 

"I made a promise," she says simply. "Not even R'iia will keep me from him." 

She speeds off into the wastelands leaving Niima's Outpost far behind.

* * *

A memory: 

_"There was always so much sand," she mused, running a sudsy cloth up and down his arms. "They said that once Jakku was full and lush and green. That it was beautiful. Now, there's nothing but ugliness."_

_Arms, thick and broad, encircle her. Droplets of water bead upon the now pruning skin. She’s pulled against a broad muscled chest. She can feel a nose softly nuzzling at the base of her neck. He considers his nose to be one of his (many, in his words) flaws. She would say otherwise for various reasons, some that would rarely go past this room, except the occasional night out when she's been plied with one too many Fuzzy Tauntauns. But here, in this bath, in this small oasis away from everything, she finds it handsome. _

_Warm breath coasts across her collarbone as a long thick fingers intertwine with her slim calloused ones. She shivers slightly in the steam._

_"You're from Jakku," he said, his tongue slowly following the trail of a water droplet along her spine._

_"Your point?"_

_"All the beauty of that planet," he worries an earlobe, "left when you did."_

_Rey leans back against the slick skin of his chest, tilting her head slightly, exposing her neck lines. "That line was only slightly less terrible than the 'nothing' line you tried before—ow!" She slaps the hand that just tweaked a nipple on her chest. "You know I'm right!"_

_The chest behind her grumbles, sinking her with him deeper into the water. "Let me flatter you once."_

_"Then do it better."_

_"Is this better then?" he asks. A hands slips down the sleek planes of her belly to sink below the water, tangling with hair below. _

_She sighs softly. "Maybe."_

* * *

_Kriff, the Teedo were right,_ Rey thinks as she navigates slowly—far more slowly than she would like—through the wastelands. She can feel the grit of the sand against her skin. That so much managed to slip through the multitude of layers she wore to fight off Jakku’s sands surprises her more than it should. She should have known better. She _should _know better. 

If sand is the lifeblood of Jakku, then the _X'us R'iia_ is its breath, the Teedo say. Rey takes a different view. Yes, sand—_so much kriffing sand, it's like the planet wants to wear her away—_is the lifeblood of Jakku. But the _X'us R'iia _is not merely its breath. The _X'us R'iia _is its rage_. _Rey remembers the small ship grave that was the closest thing she could call home a lifetime ago, and how the winds of the _X'us R'iia _beat against the grave that held her. When she was young, she sometimes thought she could hear screams if she listened closely enough. A slightly older, but still young Rey passed it off as merely the imaginings of an overactive mind. The Rey of now knows better.

They are screams.

The screams of the lost, the lamenting. The ones who held onto hope while the desert drained them of their life force. The ones who gave others false hopes until their victims expired from the lies fed to them. The screams of abandoned children. The screams of mothers. The cries of fathers. The rage of the planet itself for what it has become. This maelstrom of suffering is what Rey transverses, the screams dully echoing in her ears, sand whipping past her.

The worst part isn't the sound. This sound was the lullaby of her childhood. It's at most a cruel homecoming for her. The worst part are the parts she can now see_. _It's one thing to hear the sounds of a mother begging her child to wake, it's another to see this cruel tableau of a woman, drawn and worn. Skin, like tanned leather, flesh partially picked clean by a wake of ripper-raptors, rocking a slowly darkening rust-colored bundle. To see scavengers with varying injuries that brought demise: half smashed skulls leaking with viscera; bodies with their ( she hopes it's their) heads tied to their waist, searching aimlessly amongst the sand dunes for the haul that will get them off of this hellhole_; _small children just sitting, dead eyed or with empty gaping sockets, parts of their flesh picked clean to expose their bleach white bones against their sun-darkened skin, silently judging the one who got away.

"Returned to your grave, have you?" A voice hisses behind her. The "you" echoes between her ears.

Rey turns coming face to the old woman from the market; the woman’s mouth is wide open, exposing an unexpected amount of canines, a mixture of needle sharp and broken ones. 

"How—"

"What gives you the right to return to these grounds?_" _The old woman—creature, thinks Rey, because there is something off-putting about her. Otherworldly, even.

She swallows, glaring down at the old woman. "I have every right to be here, old woman. Now leave me. I have a promise to keep."

_"_This promise will be your grave, scavenger._"_

_"_There is only one person in the galaxy allowed to call me that. And you are not him," she stands her ground, drawing part of her robe to the side exposing a slender long cylindrical tube. 

"Let me pass, I have no quarrel with you.”

The creature leans in closer. Rey can now see what she thought was once sun-weathered skin has become constantly shifting sand with pock marks of sandstorms spread across its form. The once warm brown eyes were now pitch black endless voids. She could feel this creature’s breath on her face, diamond-sharp grains of sand grazing across her face leaving warm pinpricks of fresh blood.

"No one came back for you, child. Let the past die. Go back to the land of the living, of the green and of fertile soil. Let the dead stay dead._"_

_Let the dead stay dead._

_Let the dead stay dead._

The ghosts—for what are they, Rey thinks, but the ghosts of the unfortunate souls whose lives were surrendered to this cruel rageful place—chant in unison with the creature in front of her. The sky around her fills with the howls of the dead that _R'iia's_ rage has claimed.

She could leave. _He wouldn't blame her if she left. _It's only faint hope that leads her back to her birth planet. But she remembers when she met the one soul whose loneliness matched her own. A mere touch from galaxies away. Pain and suffering and cruelty and yet compassion behind eyes that were warm and brown and felt like home. This is a meager few steps. She once took a chance—many chances, if she's to be honest with herself—on him. Placed her faith and heart in him. This is the very least she can do for him. 

"Stars couldn't keep us apart. What makes you think that you will_?" _Rey says, staring down this creature,this rage of the planet,this _R'iia _who beats and burns this planetary hell in sorrow of what it once was. 

A silence. Sudden and chilling.

A hand, clawed and rough, gently cups her face. It feels like a mother's caress. A mother who fought to keep her child and not trade her for a few moments of oblivion. "Oh, child. What you seek will not bring him back. You know this path will only lead to sorrow and wishes for what was. Go back, child, leave this dead and bitter land_." _ The creature's sadness suffuses the Force. Rey knows this sadness, this bone-deep sorrow that blankets this planet ridden with the graveyards of fallen ships and their crews. The emptiness that suffocated as much as the sand coating the insides of your throat. This sadness that tries desperately to crush any and all attempts at hope. It tries.

"There is no life without death," she whispers. "There is no death without life. The Force needs death as much as it need life. Please, I made a promise. I know it will not bring him back. We both knew that. We both—" she swallows, "—accepted that. I promised I would try. It's the least I can do. Please, let me pass_._"

The creature—an old old spirit, some personification of the Force, _R'iia herself?—_has dissolved into the sand at her feet. The storm itself has quelled. The only thing Rey can hear is skittermice faintly cheeping and pole-snakes hissing beneath the sand. She can only hope that they will no longer impede her journey. She made a promise, after all.

* * *

_"Would you mourn me if I died?" he muses one evening, absentmindedly combing long fingers through her hair as she lies with her head in his lap. She shifts to face the ceiling, taking in his jaw line. It's a contradiction, his jawline, like everything else on his face—and himself, she reflects. It's a soft jawline, reminiscent of his mother. She gently strokes a finger along it. _

_"Do I have a reason not to?" she asks in return. _

_"You wouldn't have to deal with claims that you've tied yourself to a monster," he says softly, with only the faintest coating of not-quite bitterness and not-quite sorrow. This is an improvement for him, for them. _

_"Tied to someone implies a publicly known connection."_

_The combing stops for a moment, barely perceptible even to her, but she knows Ben as well as the ships she scaled as a child. He knows this as well. "I..." he starts. Then stops. If she didn't know any better, she'd say he was nervous. She reaches to his presence in the Force. _

_He is nervous._

_She sits up, curling her frame—sharp edges, softened slightly by regular sustenance, but she's accepted she'll never have the lush curves of other women she's seen; curves not sharpened by scarcity and survival—into his lap. Rey grasps his face in the palms of her hands. "You?" She prompts._

_"I....didn't want to hope for more," he confesses, resignation suffusing their bond. Buried beneath his self-doubt and recriminations, though, she can see a thread of his desire. Not just sexual desire, though that is very much present, but also a desire to be better for her. To be someone she could always turn to. To trust. To rest. To be a place of green and comfort in her life. And hidden within that, the faintest hope that she would do the same for him. She's never felt so loved. She never thought she could be loved in this way._

_"Then, I would like to hope that maybe,_" _Rey starts, resting her forehead against his. "....just maybe you'd considered marrying me," she finishes softly. _

_"I would—" _

_She kisses him long and slow, hands threading together in his hair. His hands clutch at her waist as if she was a dream that could disappear at any moment. _

* * *

The Crackle has changed. The Spike is still there, as well as the eponymous blackened glass patches that are ubiquitous to the Crackle. But things have changed. 

The first thing that hits her is the smell. It no longer smells of sweat and sand, but instead the air smells fresh,with a slightly sweet air about it. It reminds her of the time she came across sweets during scavenging once. The spicy-sweet smell gets stronger and gains another dimension that she could only describe as green_, _if pressed for a description. 

As she gets to the edge of the Crackle, she sees bushes of Tuanulberries spread about, leaves thicker and greener than their other siblings across Jakku, with berries at least twice as large and cool to the touch. The Spike is no longer this tall monument of death. Instead there are vines, vinesencompassing the body of the ship, twining about its duracrete scaffolding. 

Moving through this space, she sees even more vegetation. There are spinebarrels, but plumper than any she had ever seen as a child, with water seeping out of their flesh from where the fauna had bitten them. Beds of nightbloomers rise out from where there was once nothing but broken bits of permacrete and rocks. And finally, in the center of a large expanse of blackened glass she sees it—a large vibrant Tintolive tree surrounded by a circle of vibrant thrumming kyber, alive with the Force. She wants to weep. She didn't dare hope for something like this. So alive, so green_._

She leaves her speeder by the edge of the glass and slowly walks upon it. It crackles softly as she walks to the tree. Finally, she reaches it, sits down at its base, leans against the heavy bark, stares at the setting suns of Jakku, and waits. She's very good at waiting.

It may be a few hours or only a few minutes, but by the time she hears something it's dark and cool. The only things she can see are the shapes of the flora, the Spike, and the stars dotting the sky. The sound that rouses her is the crackle of glass, almost like the sounds she made when she walked across it herself. It's muffled, as if she's hearing it from underwater or echoing from somewhere far away, but accompanying it is a sensation she never thought she would feel again as long as she lived. A presence in the Force that she's missed deeply.

"I didn't think you would come," a voice soft, low, and familiar echoes soothingly in her head.

"I made a promise, didn't I?"

"I should stop underestimating you by now,” the voice replies ruefully. “Shouldn't I?" 

"Glad you finally realized that. Took you long enough."

"Death gives you a broader perspective, if nothing else."

"And a green thumb, evidently," she notes, taking in the nightbloomers, their blossoms fully unfurled and exposed to the night air.

"The base was already here, it just needed a slight push to remember what it once was."

A pause and then—"Do you like it? I know it's not the entire planet, but it will get there eventually. And the crystals just happened—"

She places a palm against the tree base. "I love it. I would have loved it even if it just a single flower."

"You deserve more than a mere flower."

"I'll decide what I deserve." 

Another pause. "Your mother is well. She misses you, but her heart seems lighter than it has in years. You'll probably see her soon, though." 

"And your friends?"

"_Our _friends are fine. Rose had another girl. I think this one has the Force in her. I've been talking to Finn about training her when she's a little older. Just a bit here and there, and she can decide her own way after that."

"Hmm."

"They miss you. Imiss you."

"I know. I wish there was another way."

"I know. And I understand, I just...." she trails off, slumping against the tree. Something gently prods her palm. She looks down and stares at a small nightbloomer that was not there before. It's different than the one sprinkled about the crackle. Instead of soft rose, it's black with streaks of red merging into a rich purple heart that connects to a sturdy green stem protruding from a small kyber chunk. It's such an oddly put together flower. Much like him. She loves it.

"It's yours. Think of it as a piece of me until we can be together again."

She cups the nightbloomer in her hands, inhaling its scent. It smells like ink and the emerald wine of his mother's people. It smells like him, like home. She stares at the starlit sky, cupping the flower to her chest. 

"I love you and I miss you, but it's not my time to join you yet."

"I know."

"I'm sorry."

"The Force has a path for all of us. This is mine but one day, it will bring you back to me, and I'll wait for you with flowers."

"I'll come back as soon as I can."

"I know."

"I love you, Ben Solo."

"And I love you, Rey Solo."

* * *

**Coda**

Old Guardian Blagg told Guardian Dain many times that Jakku was once a dead planet: empty, harsh, and barren. 

But as the other guardians walk with her through the Grove of the Skywalkers and sit beneath the tintotive tree amongst the kyber, instructing acolytes from across the galaxy on how to construct lightsabers and the mysteries of the Force, she sometimes wonders how that could be. 

(And sometimes, if the stars are bright and the glass is gleaming, she can see a couple’s shadow beneath the surface, surrounded by flowers. But only a glimpse.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read this!! Concrit is love.  
also please appreciate my rejected tag of "ya know sometimes ur lover turns into a garden. it happens."  
(ALSO pls take time to read all the other wonderful pieces in the anthology this year. ^_^)  
Feel free to hmu on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thebittersnake),[tumblr](http://mnemehoshiko.tumblr.com/),[pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/mnemehoshiko), and EVEN [DREAMWIDTH](https://mnemehoshiko.dreamwidth.org/) if ur feeling old school.


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